堕落論
坂口安吾
Discourse on Decadence
堕落論
坂口安吾 · Japanese
Written in 1946 in the ruins of Tokyo, Sakaguchi's essay tells a nation instructed to fall like blossoms that it survived, and that survival is not shameful.
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Pagera Editor's Note
Written in 1946 in the ruins of Tokyo, Sakaguchi's essay tells a nation instructed to fall like blossoms that it survived, and that survival is not shameful. War widows remarry, veterans turn to the black market, and Ango argues this is not decay but the human being returning. Loyalty, chastity and the imperial order were beautiful precisely because they were inhuman. To become human again, he writes, we must fall. It became a defining text of postwar Japan.
Author
坂口安吾
Sakaguchi Ango (1906-1955) was a Japanese novelist and essayist associated with the Buraiha, the postwar writers who rejected the old pieties. His 1946 essay Discourse on Decadence told a defeated nation that survival was not shameful, and his fiction turns beauty into something dangerous.
Discourse on Decadence
堕落論
坂口安吾 · Japanese
Written in 1946 in the ruins of Tokyo, Sakaguchi's essay tells a nation instructed to fall like blossoms that it survived, and that survival is not shameful.
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Original (Japanese)
半年のうちに世相は変った。醜の御楯といでたつ我は。大君のへにこそ死なめかへりみはせじ。若者達は花と散ったが、同じ彼等が生き残って闇屋となる。ももとせの命ねがはじいつの日か御楯とゆかん君とちぎりて。けなげな心情で男を送った女達も半年の月日のうちに夫君の位牌にぬかずくことも事務的になるばかりであろうし、やがて新たな面影を胸に宿すのも遠い日のことではない。人間が変ったのではない。人間は元来そういうものであり、変ったのは世相の上皮だけのことだ。 昔、四十七士の助命を排して処刑を断行した理由の一つは、彼等が生きながらえて生き恥をさらし折角の名を汚す者が現れてはいけないという老婆心であったそうな。現代の法律にこんな人情は存在しない。けれども人の心情には多分にこの傾向が残っており、美しいものを美しいままで終らせたいということは一般的な心情の一つのようだ。十数年前だかに童貞処女のまま愛の一生を終らせようと大磯のどこかで心中した学生と娘があったが世人の同情は大きかったし、私自身も、数年前に私と極めて親しかった姪の一人が二十一の年に自殺したとき、美しいうちに死んでくれて良かったような気がした。一見清楚な娘
English translation (Pagera AI)
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Pagera Editor's Note
Written in 1946 in the ruins of Tokyo, Sakaguchi's essay tells a nation instructed to fall like blossoms that it survived, and that survival is not shameful. War widows remarry, veterans turn to the black market, and Ango argues this is not decay but the human being returning. Loyalty, chastity and the imperial order were beautiful precisely because they were inhuman. To become human again, he writes, we must fall. It became a defining text of postwar Japan.
Author
坂口安吾
Sakaguchi Ango (1906-1955) was a Japanese novelist and essayist associated with the Buraiha, the postwar writers who rejected the old pieties. His 1946 essay Discourse on Decadence told a defeated nation that survival was not shameful, and his fiction turns beauty into something dangerous.
堕落論
坂口安吾
Translation status
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